Postdoctoral Fellow
School of Social Development, East China Normal University
Email: sycao@soci.ecnu.edu.cn
Siyang Cao is currently a Postdoc fellow at the School of Social Development, East China Normal University. She obtained her PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York in 2018, and hold an MA degree from University of Sussex in Media and Cultural Studies.
Siyang has an ongoing research interest in gender, men and masculinities, and the sociology of everyday life, with a particular focus on the perception and construction of Chinese manhood among ordinary young men. One of the central themes of Siyang’s research is to highlight the importance of culture in understanding the increasingly complex ways of identity formation as a result of rapid social transformations in contemporary urban China. Her work aims to brings indigenous concepts and cultural repertoires, such as Confucian perspectives of the relational and reflexive selfhood, into critical dialogue with global and leading sociological theories of individualisation and reflexivity. Recently Siyang is also interested in exploring the intersections of body, time and place in shaping multiple senses of belonging among Chinese older adults through the lens of gender. Her work has appeared in Journal of Gender Studies, Families, Relationships and Societies and Sociological Research Online.